In 1973, the United States legislature passed the Workforce Rehabilitation Act. On Aug. 7, 1998, an amendment to the workforce rehabilitation act, commonly referred to as “Section 508”, was signed into law by President Clinton. Section 508 requires that electronic and information technology developed or purchased by the Federal Government be accessible to people with disabilities. Section 508 establishes both non-binding guidelines for technology accessibility and binding, enforceable standards that will be incorporated into the Federal Procurement procedures. In addition to providing for enforceable standards, the amended Section 508 establishes a complaint procedure and reporting requirements to encourage compliance.
The binding and non-binding guidelines of Section 508 were put into place in order to leverage the magnitude of federal purchasing power to promote competition in the technology industry by clarifying the Federal market's requirement for accessibility in products intended for general use. Section 508 requires Federal agencies to purchase electronic and information technology that is accessible to employees and members of the public who are disabled. For example, under the Section 508 procurement regulations, this means that if two companies are bidding a government contract and only one is offering accessible solutions, the acquiring agency is required to purchase the accessible technology.
Basically, information technology products are “accessible” if they can be used as effectively by people with disabilities as by those without. Section 508 required that an ADA “Access Board” establish standards for accessibility. The Access Board in turn established an Electronic and Information Technology Access Advisory Committee (EITAAC) in October of 1998. The EITAAC was composed of representatives from industry, academics, government and disability advocacy organizations and was charged with developing standards for accessible electronic and information technology.
With respect to software applications and Web browsing, standards developed by the EITAAC include so-called functional standards that require, for example, there be a way for a person who is mobility impaired or blind to use a given information technology product or Web site. Additionally, the developed standards require a given Web site to satisfy a list of specific items for Web accessibility. The specific items need to be implemented during Web site development to ensure that a person who is mobility impaired or blind, for example, can use the Web site. Examples of such specific items include a requirement for using alternative text for images and using client side image maps instead of server side maps. These are fairly simple and clear requirements. However, other requirements are not so straightforward, and can be subject to differing interpretations.
Hence, there exists a problem with specific definition of Section 508 coding standards. Some of the standards can be vague and subject to interpretation. This is especially so in the case of Web site designers having limited experience with the applicable accessibility rules. Usually, when it comes to the actual the detailed coding implementation of the Web pages themselves, the rules are often not sufficiently definite. In many cases, there is nothing hard and concrete that specifically says “this is how the HTML code must be implemented” to guide the Web page authors. Accordingly, the rules are subject to interpretation.
One prior art approach to solve this problem involves the use of accessibility “experts” which review the HTML coding of the Web pages of a Web site and grade their degree of compliance with the accessibility standards. When violations of the standards are found, the experts can suggest or implement methods to correct the violations. This approach has a disadvantage of being expensive and slow, since the expert reviews the Web pages after they have been encoded. Many Web sites can include hundreds of Web pages. Furthermore it is a visual analysis subject to human error.
Another prior art approach to solve this problem involves the use of software-based accessibility checking tools as opposed to an actual human expert. The Web site authors use the tools to check compliance of the Web pages of the Web site with the accessibility standards. These tools are often limited in their effectiveness in that they typically process one Web page at a time. Additionally, these prior art tools typically process constituent files of the Web page as opposed to an entire Web site. Thus, prior art software-based accessibility checking is excessively slow. Prior art also does not account for capturing all information required to generate dynamic web pages, such as cookies that are used for authentication. As such, the prior art cannot reach and therefore cannot analyze much of what is provided in dynamic web applications.
Thus, what is required is an automated accessibility checking system that can assist Web site authors in ensuring the Web pages of their Web site conform to accessibility standards of the law. Additionally, the required solution should be efficiently implemented and capable analyzing entire Web pages. The present invention provides a novel solution to the above requirements.